Let There Be Dragons

I really wanted to do a post about dragons.  After all, this is the year of the dragon according to the Chinese calendar.  I have a dragon t-shirt I love and I just started watching 'Game of Thrones' on HBO.  There are baby dragons in the show and we will see how that storyline plays out.  But dragons are mythological creatures, aren't they?  Interesting though how dragons play a part in mythology all over the world - Europe, especially Greece, China, Japan, Persia, and India, to name a few, all have their traditions involving dragons.  Check out this wonderful dragon that decorates the Longshan Temple in Taipei, Taiwan.

Source:  Wikipedia

If that doesn't spark your imagination, I don't know what would.

But this is a nature blog.  So what better way to honor dragons than a post about the constellation Draco (Latin for dragon).  Maybe not as familiar to you as some constellations.  It sort of gets outshined by the Little Dipper, a constellation it winds around.

Source:  Starry Skies

But Draco has something the Little Dipper doesn't have - the Cat's Eye Nebula, one of the most complicated nebulae in the sky.  What's a nebula?  The simple definition is a cloud of gas or dust.  The more complicated version?  "At the end of the star's life, during the red giant phase, the outer layers of the star are expelled via pulsations and strong stellar winds. Without these opaque layers, the hot, luminous core emits ultraviolet radiation that ionizes the ejected outer layers of the star. This energized shell radiates as a planetary nebula." (Wikipedia)  As they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Source:  Wikipedia

Or how about this picture?

Source:  Wikipedia

It looks like a seashell!  The first picture is actually a composite of images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

Besides the Cat's Eye Nebula, Draco also contains several faint galaxies, including the Draco Dwarf Galaxy.  Draco's other claim to fame is one of its stars, Kepler10, which is orbited by Kepler 10b, the smallest planet found, so far, outside of our solar system.

So the next time you look up in the night sky and think you see the tail of a dragon, it may not be just your imagination.  For a video, click here.